meme

noun

ˈmēm 

1

: an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media

… the band encouraged fans to make memes to advertise the U.S. release of their EP …

—William Gruger

The grumpy cat meme frowned its way onto the Internet in September 2012 and never turned its dissatisfied head back. Since then, the image of the cranky cat has grown more and more popular in direct proportion to appearing less and less impressed by fame.

—Anastasia Thrift

2

: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.

—Richard Dawkins

memetic

mē-ˈme-tik  mə- 

adjective

… the exhibition seeks to give a sense not only of Holmes's origins but of the real-world milieu in which Conan Doyle set him and of his memetic spread through the culture.

—Sam Leith

Did you know?

In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, British scientist Richard Dawkins defended his newly coined word meme, which he defined as “a unit of cultural transmission.” Having first considered, then rejected, mimeme, he wrote: “Mimeme comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like gene.” (The suitable Greek root was mim-, meaning “mime” or “mimic.” The English suffix -eme indicates a distinctive unit of language structure, as in grapheme, lexeme, and phoneme.) Like any good meme, meme caught on and evolved, eventually developing the meaning known to anyone who spends time online, where it’s most often used to refer to any one of those silly captioned photos that the Internet can’t seem to get enough of.

Examples of meme in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

That look from Skenes, who won the National League Cy Young Award last season, is what led to the creation of some fun memes. —Pete Grathoff, Kansas City Star, 10 Mar. 2026

Donna Kelce is reportedly renovating her home, and social media is having a meme field day because of it. —Melina Khan, USA Today, 10 Mar. 2026

Pokémon said Thursday that the White House did not have permission to use its imagery after the administration posted a meme with some of its popular characters, including Pikachu. —Evan Drellich, New York Times, 8 Mar. 2026

But now comes a small, influential group of hard-line right-wingers who believe that, in the words of one popular meme in such circles, McCarthy was right. —Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026

Word History

Etymology

alteration of mimeme, from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme

First Known Use

1976, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Phrases Containing meme

• meme coin
• meme stock

Rhymes for meme

• beam
• bream
• cream
• creme
• deem
• dream
• gleam
• ream
• scheme
• scream
• seam
• seem

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Kids Definition

meme

noun

ˈmēm 

: an amusing or interesting item (as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media